clijsters: pot calls the kettle “bland”

An excerpt from Kim Clijsters‘ interview with BBC Radio 5 Live last night:

“Over the last few months I have been watching a little more tennis and there’s a lot of girls that I really have no clue who they are. And they play really good tennis, but what I’ve noticed on TV is that a lot of them play the same type of tennis. The speed is very similar, the movement is very similar. There’s not many new players that stand out with a different type of game.”

I guess there’s room for rueing the loss of Justine Henin and Amelie Mauresmo (in her heyday), but let us remind you that this comment is coming from a woman whose wham-bam style of play was nearly indistinguishable from that of her peers and not nearly as successful — it only got her one major.

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Comments

i would give kimmy a little more credit than that. at least she looked distinguishable physically. i could tell her from the other players (and always thought she hit harder than most). i still can’t tell a dominika from a cibulkova or a soriana from a cirstea.

She was a great player..just unlucky to win just a single major. The current *.OVAs and *.ICHes from Russia and Europe are boring and weak. Where’s the consistency in women’s tennis? Anyone will come tommorrow and defeat Angrina.

Don’t agree with that
Clijsters stood out for her defensive skill much more than for her powerful groundies. Nowadays everybody can hit big on the tour but you will hardly find someone moving as smoothly as Kim

I agree somewhat with the people above regarding Clijsters obviously physical abilities — but I do think it’s worth noting that all those splits may have won her a lot of fans but won her very few matches. And her personality was far blander than her tennis, which made watching her almost as unbearable as watching Federer!

And hey! Cibulkova is almost nothing like the other eastern europeans! For one thing she’s only 5′ 3″! Right now, she’s more Jankovic than Henin, but if there’s a potential heir to Heninism, it’s surely Dominika.